


the working title of this was “censor this, bitches“ which I decided was maybe was a little undiplomatic so I decided to give it this massive passive-aggressive title instead

by greywash



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Meta Essay, Nonfiction, On AO3 talking about AO3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-11 21:47:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16860889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: A Tumblr essay originally posted Dec. 7, 2016, regarding the difference between content on AO3 that isvile or offensive, and content on AO3 that constitutesharassment or abuse.





	the working title of this was “censor this, bitches“ which I decided was maybe was a little undiplomatic so I decided to give it this massive passive-aggressive title instead

**Author's Note:**

> As of posting on AO3 (2018.12.04), this post is also still [available on Tumblr](https://greywash.tumblr.com/post/154195190347/the-working-title-of-this-was-censor-this).
> 
> **Note** : There are three linked images that may not

yeah, yeah I know I already [reblogged “autobiography” earlier today](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3817468) which is basically about a thousand times more exactly what I want to say than any essay could possibly be BUT then I went and actually read what people are arguing here and you know what

SOOOOOOOO

There are two things that are being collapsed in this argument that we really, really cannot afford to collapse. That is:

  1. For AO3 to be a sustainable project long-term, there needs to be a comprehensive policy in place designed to prevent its users from **harassment and abuse** ; and
  2. Some content that people would like to host on AO3 is, to some people, **vile or offensive**.



Both of these things are true. However, it does not follow from (1) that we need to regulate or restrict the content of the works hosted on the Archive to ensure the content referred to in (2) doesn’t make it onto the Archive. People seem to be taking it for granted that (1) means banning all that stuff in (2), and that’s wrong.

(cw for high-level references to the existence of rape, underage sex, and anti-Semitism; as well as one marginally more specific reference to kinky sex)

The reason why “harassment and abuse” ≠ “vile or offensive”, _in this particular context_ , is that **the AO3 is not a platform designed for the purpose of facilitating person-to-person communication**. I’ve seen comparisons to Twitter; yes, Twitter is actually the goo left smeared all over the bottom of your building’s dumpster after Sanitation comes to empty it in the middle of August, but AO3 IS NOT TWITTER. Say it with me: AO3 is not Twitter.

As a user on Twitter, you are able to post “tweets.” Those aren’t scare quotes. Those quotes mean: “tweet” is a technical term for a very specific entity with a very specific technical meaning, and it comes with a very specific set of peripheral implications. That meaning includes the following: your “tweet” may be retweeted as-is (by any other Twitter user) or quote-retweeted with a response attached (by any other Twitter user). You will see these retweets, because Twitter is designed to function a lot like a conversation: you say a thing, other people say some things in response, and Twitter assumes you want to hear all those responses, which is usually wrong because see above re: dumpster.

Anyway. So you create a “tweet.” Your “tweet” will appear in listings under any hashtags that you use. People who care about those hashtags will see the entirety of your “tweet” when they log into Twitter and check those hashtags. If you mention another user by their @-handle, those mentioned users will also see the entirety of your “tweet” when they log into Twitter. Your “tweet” will _also_ appear in listings under hashtags that your retweeters or quote-retweeters attach to your “tweet,” whether or not you want your “tweet” to appear under those hashtags. While you retain the ability to delete your “tweet,” quote-retweets of your “tweet” will continue to be visible just as your original “tweet” was, along with your username. Essentially, as a user on Twitter, when you produce a “tweet,” it becomes amalgamated into a pool of all the “tweets” produced by all the users on Twitter; and once it is in that pool, it is propagated and broadcasted in a number of ways, _many of which are not under your control_. Very importantly: this loss of control over the venue in which your “tweet” is broadcasted continues even if and even after you decide to remove your “tweet” from the platform. If someone sees the quote-retweeted remains of your “tweet,” they will still have access to your username and whatever context the quote-retweeter chose to add.

AO3 is not Twitter.

As a user on AO3, the fundamental act you are privileged to perform over non-users on AO3 is the ability to post new “works.” Again, those aren’t scare quotes; I’m quoting because “work” is a very specific entity with a technical meaning that comes with a set of peripheral implications on the AO3 platform, the same way that “tweet” is a very specific entity with a technical meaning that comes with a set of peripheral implications on the Twitter platform. Yes, as an AO3 member, you can also do some other stuff: you can post comments with your name attached, which also means you can comment on works that have anon commenting disabled, and you can subscribe to alerts, and see certain things that are restricted to members-only, and I’m going to talk about a lot of that more in a sec, but the _primary_ entity that you can create as a member that you cannot create as a non-member is a “work.” Much like I focused on a “tweet,” and how a “tweet” is propagated and broadcasted on Twitter, I am going to focus on a “work,” and how a “work” is propagated and broadcasted on AO3.

When you post a “work,” that post appears on your profile page, and in listings for the fandom, and under your various tags which you yourself have added. Alerts go out to people who have subscribed to receive alerts for your specific story, or your specific user profile, and on certain relevant RSS feeds. However: what is shown to those people is not _your entire “work.”_ It’s a _summary_ of your work, with some associated meta information, namely your name, and the work tags, and the title. Twitter is designed to work like a conversation. The AO3 is designed to work like a library with a digital card catalog. Searching and broadcasting occurs on _meta-information_ , **not on content**. You retain control over _both_ your “work,” and—by way of the tags/title/summary headers—the content of the card that represents your work in the card catalog.

If you click on or subscribe to the RSS feed for a tag on AO3, when you refresh that feed, you pull cards from the catalog, so you only see the meta-information for any “works” marked with that tag. You do not see the “work” without clicking through to a new screen. If you click on a hashtag on Twitter, you see the entirety of the “tweets” marked with that hashtag.

If you follow a person on AO3, when you get AO3 alerts, the alerts pull cards from the catalog, so you only see the meta-information for any “works” from that person. You do not see the individual “works” without clicking through to a new screen. If you follow a person on Twitter, you see the entirety of the “tweets” from that person.

What I’m getting at here is the following: **harassment and abuse** occurs when a person—a user of a given platform—is subjected to content, by means of that platform, that they find **vile or offensive** , without their consent and without the ability to avoid it. I’m using the passive voice for a reason: it is not harassment if (e.g.) I, as an ethnically Jewish woman on the internet, happen to stumble upon an anti-Semitic Breitbart article in Google search results and I click through because I’m horror-fascinated to see what it says. It _is_ harassment if I, as an ethnically Jewish woman on the internet, receive a barrage of comments or emails or direct messages telling me that I’m part of the cabal controlling the world economy or bombarding me with anti-Semitic slurs or issuing death threats. “Harassment and abuse” is an issue of person-to-person communication, and it’s specifically an issue of someone being _passively but directly damaged or distressed_ by contact _they cannot terminate, decline, or prevent_. It _by definition_ occurs during person-to-person contact.

“Vile or offensive” content, however, can be vile and/or offensive without directly damaging or distressing anyone, _and it can be vile or offensive even when someone actively seeks it out_. I haven’t read _Mein Kampf_. I feel pretty okay saying, having never read it, that _Mein Kampf_ is probably vile and offensive. If I went to campus and checked _Mein Kampf_ out from the library, I’m pretty damn sure I would find it vile and offensive. But no one in their right mind would possibly consider an ethnically Jewish woman voluntarily going and voluntarily retrieving a book that she knew to be anti-Semitic and horrible and then voluntarily choosing to read it “harassment” or “abuse.” That would be—nonsensical. Just. Absolute nonsense.

So. One more time: **AO3 is not Twitter**.

Yes, by all means. For AO3 to be a sustainable project long-term, there needs to be a comprehensive policy in place designed to prevent its users from **harassment and abuse**. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how we prevent AO3 from turning into the goo left smeared all over the bottom of your building’s dumpster after Sanitation comes to empty it in the middle of August. But for that conversation to be meaningful, let’s be _really fucking clear_ about what is and is not **harassment and abuse**.

Fiction _qua_ fiction** is not harassment or abuse. Interacting with fiction is by definition an intentional experience: a person makes a fiction, and then another person comes along and interacts with the fiction. Both people _choose_ to be a part of this interaction, and that choice acts as a firewall: it protects the people interacting with the fiction from being harassed and abused, because intention and consent are required to interact with the fiction. This doesn’t mean that fiction can’t be vile and offensive—I have interacted with a lot of fiction, fan and otherwise, that I have found vile and/or offensive for one reason or another, but I _chose_ that interaction, and I had the choice to end that interaction if I wanted or needed to. Fiction _qua_ fiction not being harassment or abuse also doesn’t mean that **the AO3** cannot be a platform for harassment or abuse—it _can_ be that, it could become that; and that needs to be addressed. But the place where that harassment and/or abuse has the potential to occur is _at the point of person-to-person contact_ , i.e.: in comments, or in user inboxes, or (potentially) in email alerts— **not within the fiction itself**. But _an AO3 “work” is not direct person-to-person contact_. The “card catalog” element of how AO3 lists and broadcasts works means that there’s an insulating layer between fiction and reader to ensure that a reader must _choose_ the direct interaction with the fiction. Because of that element of choice, the fiction itself _cannot_ be harassment or abuse.

[** N.B. I’d like to be able to argue that art _qua_ art is not harassment or abuse, but for one thing, that isn’t necessarily true, since “art” is a hugely broad category and also I know some kind of unethical performance artists; and for another, using the term “art” encourages this argument about whether or not something has “artistic merit”, which for one thing @havingbeenbreathedout [has totally owned that already](http://havingbeenbreathedout.tumblr.com/post/154122612418/on-taboo-themes-in-fiction), and for another is a 100% subjective proposition and also 100% irrelevant to the issue of harassment and abuse. So let’s just stick with “fiction” for the time being, with the caveat that this entire argument about “fiction” can be extended to anything (any “work”) that can, at present, be hosted on AO3, with the Archive’s current technological capabilities.]

Since I can hear you all gearing up for a resounding chorus of “BUT WHAT IF—”

Yes. Of course there are abusive ways that the Archive could be used. But most of them involve the direct channels for person-to-person communication on the Archive: namely, comments, alerts, and Archive inboxes. So I would like to call your attention to a few important options in the AO3 preferences page:

The single most important difference between the Archive and Twitter is that on the Archive, direct person-to-person channels are—at least to some extent—opt-in. I say this as a person who has email alerts on comments disabled because I have mental health issues, and sometimes I don’t want to interact with other humans / my fic comments, so it’s easier for me to keep my comments in my AO3 inbox and check them when I feel up to interacting with other humans / my fic comments. I can make that decision, and still read and post fic on the Archive, because the Archive is first and foremost a platform for **creating and archiving transformative “works.”** There’s no equivalent method for opting out of the Twitter sea-of-“tweets” conversation, because Twitter is first and foremost a platform for **participating in that sea-of-“tweets” conversation**.

So the next question is, could the AO3 card catalog-library structure be used to enable harassment and abuse? Oh, probably. So can email! So can postal mail! Basically any platform can be misused. But the answer is still not to censor content. Let’s think instead about how the Archive’s structure could be misused to create harassment and abuse, and deal with that—the harassment and abuse. Not, for example, fiction about rape, or underage sex.

And okay, fine, let’s talk, for a second, about rape and underage sex. There’s a fundamental difference between (e.g.) child pornography and fictional works which include underage sex, even fictional works which include “extreme” underage sex, which is that child pornography is created by damaging and exploiting _actual children_. If you don’t understand the difference between someone taking sexualized photos or videos of an _actual, real-life child_ and someone writing about fictional children engaging in fictional sex, I genuinely do not know how to talk to you. It’s already illegal to make child porn. We do not need to make it illegal to make child porn on AO3, _because making child porn is already illegal_. Writing about underage people having sex, in many contexts, may be vile and offensive; but it’s usually not illegal. It’s also not illegal for a grown person to dress up in a diaper and suck on a pacifier while their sexual partner(s) get all up on them, even if some people think that’s super creepy. It’s not illegal because no actual children are being hurt.

And rape: rape is another thing that occurs in fiction; and sometimes when rape occurs in fiction people find that vile and offensive. Sometimes people find it cathartic and important. Sometimes it’s “art”; sometimes it’s “porn”; sometimes it’s maybe both, and in _any_ case, that’s very frequently a useful and important place to have a useful and important actual conversation about rape, and what rape is, and what rape does, and how rape is seen, and how rape is invisible, and how we as a society need to do things better when it comes to rape and survivors of rape and perpetrators of rape. But rape in fiction is not harassment and abuse, because fiction _qua_ fiction cannot be harassment and abuse. [Surprise-simulating raping an actor with a stick of butter for a better take is harassment and abuse, because it damaged and distressed that actor without her consent](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/dec/04/actors-disgust-last-tango-paris-rape-scene-confession-bertolucci); but [filming rape scenes is not intrinsically harassment and abuse](http://www.harmony-korine.com/paper/int/oth/chloeface.html) because—even when people find them vile or offensive—rape scenes existing in fiction are not generally something someone is subjected to without their consent. Even if they’re gross, rape scenes in fiction are not intrinsically harassment or abuse. Even if they’re written to turn people on, rape scenes in fiction are not intrinsically harassment or abuse. Even if they’re written to be “edgy” or “kinky” or “cool” instead of meaningful societal commentary, rape scenes in fiction are not intrinsically harassment or abuse. Even if they don’t have artistic merit, rape scenes in fiction are not intrinsically harassment or abuse.

“BUT GINS,” you say. “Writing about [ underage sex / rape / kink / feminization ] normalizes [ the sexualization of minors / rapey behavior towards women / sexual violence / shitty gender attitudes ] ! ! ! ! ! ! !” Really? Does it? _How?_ How do you know that that’s what it does? Give me examples. Quote me paragraph and line. It’s not that I don’t believe you; it’s that I spend a lot of time teaching teenagers how to write persuasive essays, and I’ve got sixth graders who understand this principle. If you want to assert something about a piece of art, you need to back your shit up. Talk to me about what techniques, what authorial choices, make _this_ depiction of underage sex / rape / kink / feminization problematic, or _all_ depictions of underage sex / rape / kink / feminization problematic, but spoiler alert: that last one is super fucking hard to do. But yes, by all means, talk about historical and societal context. Analyze the nuances of the language, the subtleties of the sexual choreography. I absolutely challenge you to do that—

—and then I challenge you to do it without having a text to refer to.

Good fucking luck, my friend.

Part of the purpose of fiction is to allow us to examine things that are difficult or impossible to examine in nonfiction, for one reason or another. Think about dystopic science fiction: a huge percentage of American seventh graders, basically every seventh grader in California public schools at least, is required to read [_The Giver_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giver). Why? What’s the purpose of that? Why have we as a society decided that a bunch of children, just on the cusp of beginning to really solidify their own ideas of their selves and their futures, need to read a book about conformity enforceable by death and the dangers of blindness to history and the revolutionary potential of—among other things—love, and desire, and narrative itself?

Fiction allows us to enter into someone else’s reality—lived or imagined or some combination of the two—and use that reality as a mirror for, among other things, our own understanding of good and evil. Sometimes we need stories about things we find vile and offensive. Sometimes we need stories to make us uncomfortable. Sometimes we need those stories to challenge what we do and do not believe is acceptable—and sometimes we need those stories to reinforce what we already knew, to let us be able to articulate where is the line in the sand: this far, and no further. Fiction—including fanfic, including transformative works of all kinds—is part of a dialog about humanity, and reality, and morality that runs through the whole of human history. But it can’t speak on or to or with any of that if it doesn’t exist.

I also want to remind all you young'uns here that a major factor in the flight of fandom from LiveJournal to the Archive in the first place was [an LJ crackdown on journals that LJ felt were doing something naughty](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Strikethrough_and_Boldthrough). To wit:

> LiveJournal had suspended over 500 journals based on their interest lists. Interests included but were not limited to: child pornography, incest, pedophilia, rape.
> 
> Among the deleted ljs were RPG journals, book discussion groups, rape survivor groups, and fannish groups, including the large and popular Harry Potter fanfiction community Pornish Pixies, which was an age-restricted community for adult HP fanfiction.

I was on LJ in a fannish capacity at the time; I was a member of Pornish Pixies, and though my personal journal was not one of the ones targeted for deletion by LJ, many of my friends’ journals were. Because of that experience I have supported AO3 and the OTW financially, whenever I’ve been able, since their inception, in large part because the flight of fandom from LJ was both socially painful and artistically disastrous, because both years of conversation and analysis and discussion and a great many transformative works themselves— _art_ —that existed there and nowhere else were lost. Those losses makes fandom as a community poorer.

I would also like to say that personally, a major factor in both my development as a writer and my own ability to engage with the sparsely mined field of my personal history and sexual identity, has been that AO3 is an open archive, structured like a library with a digital card catalog, but without restrictions on content. “Autobiography"—which I personally (if admittedly not at all objectively) think is the best thing I’ve ever written—would absolutely, without question, not exist without the Archive. Neither would "Immortal Beloved” or, in fact, “build your wings,” because issues surrounding consent—what defines consent and what defines the _lack_ of consent—are absolutely central to both of those stories. Back in the LJ days writing stories like that was a little bit like tiptoeing into a room with a cake that you’d slaved all day (or month, or year) over, and wondering whether or not that cake was maybe going to explode and (a) destroy you, your apartment, and all of your worldly possessions; or (b) destroy all of your friends: were you going to get reported for content about “rape” and wind up deleted? It wasn’t worth it, so I didn’t do it. I don’t know for sure that I wasn’t alone in that feeling, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

So. Let’s just—stop. Let’s stop pretending that someone clicking through to read a story and being triggered or upset by it is harassment or abuse. It isn’t. It’s unfortunate. I would prefer that people didn’t have that experience. Depending on the circumstances, there might— _might_ —be a valid conversation to have about active misrepresentation of the meta-information on the associated card in the AO3 library card catalog. That might— _might_ —under some very limited, very unusual circumstances, constitute abuse or harassment. It’s possible that that’s a conversation we need to have, about tagging and warning policies and informative headers—like, [I’ve written about warnings before, and why I warn the way that I do and so on, and I feel pretty strongly about that](http://fizzygins.tumblr.com/post/115905019187/gins-you-should-probably-tell-me-not-to-write-a), but I’m willing to talk about the issues involved and ways to keep people safe, and as strongly as I feel about my personal warning policy, I feel like _even I_ have some room for compromise there.

But that conversation doesn’t in any way imply that any “work,” however vile and offensive it may be, to however many people may find it so vile and offensive, _is itself_ harassment or abuse. It _can’t_ be, because an AO3 “work” is never encountered by a user in a passive way; and there are profound philosophical, artistic, and cultural reasons why we as fans should resist, with all our might, any effort to censor the content of the AO3 itself.


End file.
